Tuesday, July 28, 2009

You can point a radical to asymmetry, but you can't give him the courage to face it

Starchild wrote:

SC) I don't hear you complaining about the asymmetry of the National LP putting out official publications, press releases, fundraising letters, etc., that implicitly and often explicitly adopt moderate premises, tone, etc., while mention of the Non-Aggression Principle is scarcely anywhere to be seen or heard. (SC

Hah. In the famous Donny Ferguson email that you and other radicals love to quote out of context, Donny wrote that Libertarians believe in the principle of "non-initiation of force". I even quoted this for you four days ago! As for "moderate premises, tone, etc.", that's just more vague insubstantive mumbling.

As I explained in my previous message, your only substantive complaint here is that official LP communications aren't saying /enough /of the things that anarchists agree with. By contrast, my complaint was that the LP had been saying things (e.g. personal secession) that we smallarchists DISagree with. Either quote me an official LP communication that /actually contradicts/ your crypto-anarchist principles, or admit that your complaint just isn't in the same league as mine.

LOL. Did you even READ the message from me that you bottom-quoted in full? I repeat: BH) Radicals claim it's "offputting" to them if the LP doesn't issue a 14,000-word agreement with the details of their anarchist agenda -- while hypocritically dismissing the complaints of libertarians whose principles are actually /contradicted /by some of those details. In other words: anarchists get to complain if the LP doesn't say nearly everything anarchists believe, but smallarchists have to shut up and smile if they disagree with anything the anarchists make the LP say. (BH OK, now try offering a response that I can't rebut simply by rubbing your nose in what I already wrote. :-)

This is so vague as to be arguably meaningless -- and blatantly ignores the Statement of Principles on which our Party's ideology and purpose is grounded. If you think any candidate, officer, or delegate contravenes these principles, then state your accusation and see if you can make it stick. I offer myself as a test case. I advocate state taxation of aggression -- monopolizing, depleting, polluting, or congesting the commons. Do I contravene the SoP? Am I a Pledge violator? Go ahead, try to purge me. I dare you.

And if you say the SoP doesn't exclude my geominarchist principles, then who are you to demand standards different from our SoP? You can either demand enforcement of the SoP, or you can try to amend it. Any other complaint about "ideological standards" is hollow.

SC) The failure to adhere to the 1974 Dallas Accord under which Libertarians agreed to leave the door open to either anarchy or limited government and not take a position one way or the other (SC

I explained last year why the Dallas Accord is asymmetric: http://libertarianintelligence.com/2008/05/restore74-with-denver-accord.html. Wake me when any radical ever offers a cogent response. And by the way, the Platform still does not contain any language advocating that the state should have any authority to initiate force. Again, if you think even a single clause in the Platform contravenes the SoP, then you should organize an appeal to the Judicial Committee per Bylaw 7.8.

SC) The insistence on treating the Libertarian Party as an end in itself [...] (SC

Find the quotation mark key on your keyboard. Press it. Then cut and paste an official LP communication that "insists" as you describe above. Then type a closing quotation mark. Can you do that, or not? On this front, all I've seen from you is a six-word out-of-context quote from Donny Ferguson. I already corrected you by giving the actual context. Feel free to address it. :-)